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Blog for barton808

Tuesday Mar 20, 2007

In answer to Saturday's Bar Bet, the Patron Saints of Scotland, England and Wales are: Andrew, George and David.

St Patrick - Ireland

St Andrew - Scotland

St George - England

St. David - Wales

Whats particularly interesting, which my boss Simon (I had to put in this glam shot ;-) turned me on to, is the fact that Union Jack (technically the Union Flag) is actually made up of the flags of the three of the four guys above:

Saturday Mar 17, 2007

Well today is Saint Patrick's day, a day for revelry and libations in many locations across the globe.

Now most people know that St. Pat is the patron saint of Ireland, the guy who chased all the snakes out of Eire. (Fun facts to know and tell: St. Patrick's real name was Maewyn Succat. Do you think growing up he got teased about his name by the other kids on the playground?)

The question is, can you
name the other three patron saints that make up the fab four of Great
Britain and Ireland? That is to say, who are the patron saints of
England, Scotland and Wales?

Monday Feb 12, 2007

The time has come the walrus said...to get the heck out of Silicon Valley. Given the job Im doing, working with the GNU/Linux community and managing Sun's relationship with the FSF, its a job that I can do anywhere. I choose to do it in Austin.

Its been a great 12 years here in the Bay Area but now with three little monkeys to support it doesnt seem to make as much sense. Austin on the other hand...that seems to make a lot of sense. For starters, for half the price of our house here we are building a house in Austin twice the size. To put that into perspective, the size of our house in Austin will be larger than our entire lot here in San Jose. All that and we get great public schools and no state income tax. A beautiful blue oasis in a large red desert. A great place to raise kids.

The movers are packing up the house as I type this and tomorrow they'll come to haul it all away. The wife and kids have already gone to the in-laws (once the furniture arrives I'll retrieve the family). The following day I will leave before the crack of dawn and begin the journey to Austin. Driving long distances seems to be so quintessentially American. I look forward to doing my patriotic duty and driving half-way across country. My 25 hours of driving time will take me through California, Arizona, New Mexico and then into the heart of Texas. Ive got my ipod, my cds, and my camera, Im good to go.

Monday Jan 29, 2007

Last Saturday I got to present at PFOSSCON '07 held on
Oahu at the University of Hawaii
Manoa.
It was my first time out speaking on behalf of Sun's efforts in the
Free and Open Source arena and I was really pleased the way it turned
out. It was good crowd drawn from Hawaii's schools (students and
teachers) as well as the professional community and I was impressed by
the level of interest and the quality of questions I got.

The
big draw for the event was the prophet of the Free Software movement,
Richard Stallman. I had never met Stallman before and had heard all
sorts of horrendous tales involving personal hygiene and a rabid set of
beliefs. Needless to say I was a bit daunted that my first time
speaking at a
conference on Free and Open Source Software would be in front of him.
The morning of the event, however, I felt much more at ease. When
Stallman walked in the room, instead of the Thor like figure I had
imagined, he was on the short side, had a bit of a pot-belly and a slight New
York accent.

The PFOSSCON audience at the UH Manoa

Richard Stallman letting freedom ring

Stallman's Talk

(To view recordings, via Free Software, of the any of the talks given at PFOSSCON including Richard Stallman's, click here.)

I was impressed with the talk he gave which was lucid, non-technical
and sprinkled with humor and bad puns. Although I had read some of his
essays beforehand, the talk was a great introduction to the Free
Software movement, its history, its ideals and why its important. Here
are some of the notes I took:

Free Software (Free as in Freedom, not Free as in beer) respects
the users freedoms

In order to be considered free software it must reflect the four
freedoms

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and
adapt it to your needs. [Access to the source code is a precondition
for this.]

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help
your neighbor.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
[Access to the source code is a precondition for this.]

GNU/Linux Operating System

Stallman began the GNU project in 1983 with the goal of
developing a completely free operating system. He based GNU on UNIX
since it was a portable operating system and would allow upward
compatibility as well provide familiarity. He talked about the
derivation of name GNU, which he considers one of the funniest words in
the English language.

The GNU team had great success developing the userland but were
having a tough time developing a kernel when low and behold a student
in Finland came up with a kernel in 1991 called Linux. In 1992 the
Linux kernel was relicensed under a free license and it was then
combined with the GNU userland to create the GNU/Linux operating system.

He is adamant that the resulting operating system always be
referred to as GNU/Linux (GNU+Linux) rather than simply Linux. Not
only is "Linux" incorrect since it is only the kernel but, more
importantly it leaves out the ideals of freedom which GNU is based on
and which Linus Torvalds doesnt care about.

Open Source vs Free Software: Along the same lines as "Linux,"
Stallman is staunchly against using the term "Open Source" since
embodies only the practical concerns and not the ethical issues and
ideals that "Free Software" espouses. The concern here is that even
if "Open Source"could get you to the goal of completely free software,
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted." Without the ideological
insight and vigilance that Free Software provides, it would be easy
for proprietary software to find its way back in.

The Liberating of Java technology

For many years Java was a problem ("Free but Shackled") but the
problem is now being solved since Sun is liberating the platform. We
must learn a lesson from the history of Java, so we can avoid other
such traps in the future.

To save money. This is superficial since proprietary vendors
can donate software with the idea of, like a drug, students will get
hooked on their software and then will be willing to pay for it after
they graduate.

To educate the best programmers. If kids dont have access to
the code they can only learn so much about how the program works and
how to write good code.

Stallman then ended his presentation with the appearance of his
alter-ego, St. Ignucius (ill do a short blog on that in a couple of
days).

Be sure to tune in tomorrow when I will take you through a pictorial
oddessey of our travels on the Big Island

Friday Jan 05, 2007

A
couple weeks ago was one of my favorite days of the year up here in the
northern hemisphere, December 21 aka the-shortest-day-of-the-year .
Its one my favorites because from here on out, at least until the other
solstice, the days get longer and longer. Im big into sunlight, not
necessarily basking in it, although there are worse things you could do
on a summer afternoon, but being able to look out my windows at home,
work or in the car and see it. Basically, I'll have to confess, like
the late great John Denver once proclaimed, sunshine on my shoulder, makes me happy (even if it is coming through a window like it is now).

As a result, in past years at this time I have found myself obsessed with weather.com
and regularly checking on the widening of the gap between sunrise and
sunset. This year Im a bit distracted, what with the new kids and the
upcoming move, but I did manage to log in on the 22nd and check out the
amount of daylight at few spots around the world. I've even thrown in
a token Southern Hemisphere locale for reference.

Here is what I found the day after the solstice (from darkest to lightest).

Barrow

Reykjavik

Edinburgh

San Jose

Tokyo

Austin

Honolulu

Capetown

Daylight

0

4hrs 8min

6hrs 58min

9hrs 35 min

9hrs 45min

10hrs 11min

10hrs 51min

14hrs 25min

Sunrise

NA

11:22 am

8:43 am

7:19 am

6:47 am

7:24 am

7:05 am

5:32 am

Sunset

NA

3:30 pm

3:41 pm

4:54 pm

4:32 pm

5:35 pm

5:56 pm

7:57 pm

Not sure if there is any big a-ha
here other than, given the choice, right now I would prefer to be in Capetown rather than Barrow Alaska. Taking a less dramatic comparison, it is interesting to see that when we move from San Jose to
Austin we will be getting almost 45 more minutes of light.

I hope
check back in on these cities in a few months and see how things have
changed.